Stephen Wandera
3 November 2009
Kampala — African leaders should embrace good governance to curb global warming, a former Canadian legislator and environmental activist, has appealed. Dr Alvin Curling was speaking in Kampala yesterday, during the African Initiative Congress, which aimed at addressing aspects of climate change.
"Poor governance can lead to global warming. Some governments allow deforestation in fear of being voted out of power," Dr Alvin said. He added: "When electing leaders, we should make sure we elect people who can be accountable."
Uganda is one of the African countries faced with devastating effects of climate change including food shortage, droughts, floods and increase in disease outbreaks. The meeting attracted over 1,000 climate experts, donors, local and central government officials.
Warming faster
According to British scientist, Prof. Gordon Conway, the continent is warming so fast and intense floods, droughts and storm surges may be difficult to avert.
"There is already evidence that Africa is warming faster than the global average with more warm spells and fewer extremely cold days," Prof. Conway said.
The government in 2007 attempted to give part of Mabira Forest to Scoul, an investor, to grow sugarcane, a move that sparked off riots in Kampala.
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Africa is not helpless against climate change.
Angle 1: Stop selling oil to the outside world. The money you get does more harm than good anyway.
Angle 2: Fix your water cycle by clearing your waterways of aquatic weeds. These dessication machines are drying out your continent. They must be harvested and the silt that they have built up must be cleared. When they are gone, your rivers will flow, your lakes will refill, your aquifers will again be replenished. You will also improve drainage and reservoir capacity, which in turn will reduce the severity of flooding (record breaking storms will still break more than records). A functioning water cycle is the natural cooling system for Earth. The clearance can be financed by making the harvested weeds into biofuels. Use the silt to restore desertified soil or to fight erosion.
Angle 3: Continue and expand the reforestation efforts.
Angle 4: Move both food and fuel production down to a lower level of concentration. Local production adequate for local consumption is the key to independence. The success of local gardening efforts is a very frequent theme of articles on this site. Hurray! A very large proportion of local fuel needs can be supplied by the anaerobic digestion of organic wastes of various origins (human, food, agricultural, the above-mentioned weeds). This is good sanitation, too. Solar, wind and geothermal can be "harvested" locally, too.